November 07, 2011

Thing 10: Explore research specific networks

So you have a twitter account, you know how to use it and you’re in contact with some of the other people on the 23 Things course. Now what? Find other people to follow.

Following people within your area is a great way to expand your network. Even if you don’t personally interact with the people in question, having their tweets added to your feed can be hugely beneficial. For instance once you follow a wide range of people in your area, your twitter feed soon becomes full of an interesting and diverse range of articles, papers, videos and podcasts which people link to in their tweets. There’s so much information on the web and so much content posted on Twitter that being selective about who you follow is necessary if you want to cut through the clutter and find what you’re interested in.

In this way Twitter can function as a form of social filtering, helping us find content online which will be useful or interesting to us. Exactly who you follow will shape the extent to which this is the case and it’s something which rewards work and thought. But how do you know who to follow?

A great way of finding people to follow is to use the lists feature. This allows Twitter users to create lists of people within a particular area. Go to each of the lists linked below and look through the people listed in them. Is there any one you want to follow? If so then select ‘follow’ and you’ll rapidly have a wide range of academics in your Twitter network.